Dreamscape
by Amber Masquerade
Summary: Desperate to save his meister from the madness that had consumed her soul, Soul must delve into Maka's dreams and pull her back into consciousness before she is trapped inside her mind for the rest of her life, forced to relive her nightmares on an endless replay - a dangerous mission that him or Maka might never survive.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: A little fanfic inspired by that scary movie Insidious.**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Soul Eater or any of its characters**

* * *

"This does not look good...this does not look good at all," the professor says as he examines her sleeping body laid out on the bed of the DWMA nurse office.

Soul Eater watches over his sleeping meister worriedly, pacing around the room back and forth, and finally says, "Can you help her, Professor Stein?"

Stein sits back in his chair with a smoking cigarette hanging out of his mouth, and thinks for something to calm the scythe boy down. "There might be a chance to save her from this. But it will be dangerous." Soul stops his pacing and walks over slowly to where she lay, gently caressing her ice-cold hand.

She was alive. Everyone knew and could tell by each labored breath she took and how she cringed every time she had one of her nightmares. But her skin was frozen to the touch, and no one knew why. "Her soul was devoured by the madness," Stein had told the group. "But she's fighting it. That's how she ended up in this coma of hers."

Soul blamed himself for it. For letting his meister fight when they had told her it would be too much for her. But she had always been so determined, so frustratingly stubborn that they would've never seen it coming.

"I think I might have to do more research on this type of madness," Stein says. "This is no ordinary type of sleep. This is the type of sleep that she cannot wake up from by herself." The ache in Soul's chest grew larger as he watched her whimper and toss and turn in her sleep. He only gripped her hand tighter, weaving his fingers in between hers.

"I'm sorry, Maka..." he whispers softly to her, knowing that she would not be able to hear. A hardened hand sternly grips his shoulder, and he looks up into Professor Stein's cold and calculating eyes, searching for a hint of emotion.

"We'll bring her back," he reassured him. "I promise, we'll do everything it takes."

* * *

Soul walked home alone today, making his way down the Shibusen stairs and down to their apartment. It was late at night, and everyone else had headed home except for him, who had stayed by Maka's side ever since this morning. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and braved the frosty desert winds of Nevada.

Opening the door to the apartment, he was greeted by the sight of Blair in her cat form waiting for him at the dinning room table. "Soul-kun~" she cooed innocently. "When is Maka-chan coming back?"

He stared blankly at the cat without an answer. "Oh... I see. I hope she comes home soon!" She says sadly.

Soul wished the same thing. Tonight, it was supposed to be Maka's turn to cook. Ignoring his growling stomach, he locked himself up in his room and slumped down next to the door, cradling his pounding forehead. Judging from his headache, he guessed that tonight was going to be another sleepless night; it was either that or the dream that had been constantly replaying whenever he closed his eyes - when Maka had gone up to face that thing, and it had swallowed her up in the madness. He'd been having that dream ever since the mission.

* * *

"Do you hear that, Soul? It's nearby!" She said excitedly as she ran through the abandoned building.

The albino boy reflected through his shiny polished scythe and watched her as she went deeper into the hallway. "Are you sure you're up for this, Maka? We don't even know exactly what we're up against." He peered around the area, seeing the empty and darkened rooms around them through their cracked doors and shattered window panes, and the crumbling concrete structure vibrating unsteadily with each step she took.

"I'm sure of it, Soul," she smiled at him. "As long as you're hear to protect me, I'll be fine."

They hadn't even noticed the tentacle slithering around the corner fast enough until it had swiftly wrapped itself around her ankle and began dragging her down the hallway, whiplashing her all around. "Gah!" She cried as she struggled to steady herself while it yanked her. Eventually using the sharp side of her blade to sever it off her leg, and she finally regained her senses as it retreated. "What the hell was that?!" She yelled.

"Are you okay?" He asked cautiously, for he knew his meister could handle much more of a hit like that one.

"I'm okay," she sighed. "It just caught me off guard, that's all." Maka rose up and looked around in the darkness for any sign of it. "We should keep going. I can sense its soul, and it's close. But we have to keep an eye out for those tentacle thingies 'cause there's probably more than one."

"Right," he agreed and continued to watch every corner carefully as she moved slower down the hall. Listening to the endless echo of her footsteps, Soul darted his eyes around and spotted one above them, poised to strike at her. "Above you! 12'o clock!" He warns quickly. She screeches to a stop and swings her scythe ever so skillfully, slashing the tentacle in half before it could even touch her. "Another one! To your left!" Another quick slice. "I think there's one more behind you!" Maka ducks, narrowly avoiding being pierced by the thing, and grabs it with her bare hand. Soul stared in awe at his meister as she wrestled with the squirming before finally stomping on it, and it stopped its moving and shriveled up into nothing. "Nice," he smirked at her, but he was not surprised. He knew she was something else, different from any other of the meisters.

"Let's keep going. It's just around the corner now!" She continued on confidently. At the end of the hall, there was a small little light that wavered up and down, as if taunting them.

"Is that it?" He asked, squinting his eyes to see it clearer.

"Yeah...I can feel its soul so clearly," she murmurs and approaches the light even more. "Be careful, there's something... off about this one." Soul takes another look at the pre-Kishin, watching it carefully. He could've sworn her heard a strange gurgling noise coming from it...

Maka stops running and steps toward the little ball of light with Soul slung over her shoulder. It didn't look like it was moving much, just hovering over the same spot. "It was moving around just moments ago," she said. Suddenly, it shoots upwards and rockets away from them and down the hall. Maka had been startled and whipped her scythe around in front of her, but nothing happened. She waited a few more seconds before relaxing.

"Maka...I have a really bad feeling about this," Soul said suspiciously, more alert than ever. There it was again. That mysterious gurgling sound. "Do you hear that?"

She didn't respond, instead she was fixated on the little bright orb that had darted away and now was all the way at the end of the hallway. A sudden wave of fear washed over Soul and he froze at the oncoming danger that he sensed. "Maka! Watch out!" He shouted, but it was too late.

The weapon watches in horror as his meister is attacked from all directions by a swarm of those tentacles, grabbing her and coiling around the both of them before she even had time to lift her blade in the air. In a desperate gamble to save her, he transformed out of his scythe form and tried to pull her out of the tangled mess, but they smacked him away. They ensnared around her so much that he had lost her image in the black mass and could no longer see her body. "Soul!" She lets out an ear-piercing scream as they engulf her and drag her away.

"Maka!" He screams and dashes after her. Reaching out in the darkness, he manages to hang on to one, clinging on to it hopelessly. But it disintegrates in his hand and he falls into the dark abyss below him. "Maka!" He's falling now, deeper and deeper into the hole as Maka's voice screams his name. Her words reverberate against the endless walls saying the same thing.

"Soul! Help me..." He hears her voice one more time. The world around him spins faster until he could no longer breathe and all he saw was black. "HELP ME!"

* * *

RIIING! RIING!

He shot up from his bed in a cold sweat, hyperventilating and pulse racing.

RIING! RIING!

Soul calms down and composes himself before picking up the phone. "Eater and Albarn residence," he whispers, shakily holding the phone in to his ear.

"Soul?" Stein's voice calls him from the other line. "This is Stein. It's urgent news. Come down to the DWMA quickly. I've found out a way to save her."


	2. Chapter 2

"Hey...Soul. Get up," she told him. Soul's eyes fluttered open, adjusting to the fuzzy image of Maka standing above him. "It's time to go."

"Huh...What?" He cleared his fogged up mind and sat up in the empty hallway. He looked around, not seeing anymore monsters, or anymore tentacles reaching out to grab them, or anymore misleading shiny orbs of light trying to trick them into their heinous trap. "Where are we?" He asks her.

Maka lends him a hand, pulling him up from the cold concrete floor. "It is nothing. You were hallucinating from the madness. But it's okay now. I defeated it," she says, almost robotically.

"What happened?"

"While you were hallucinating, I defeated it. That was all," she said more casually than normal. "It's okay," Maka reassured him once more.

He should've known that it was not okay. He should've noticed that her once-lively olive-green eyes had become a distant and empty stare, hollow and blank instead of what they once were. He should've noticed that she no longer cleaned up his messes, or yelled at him to clean, or cooked dinner with heart like she used to. Or even put effort into her schoolwork like she always did.

Ever since that day, when they would return from school, Maka would take a seat on their couch with her book. But instead of opening it, she would just leave it on the coffee table and stare at it blankly with her hands tucked on her lap for hours upon hours. He had thought it was one of her depressed streaks that she rarely had, or maybe the mission didn't go perfectly as she wanted it to, but this time it was more than strange.

Secretly, he knew why he didn't acknowledge his meister's behavior sooner. _'As long as you're hear to protect me, I'll be fine,'_ she had told him. Those words stung in his chest as he remembered what he let happen to her. How he let those tentacle consume her. How he was completely useless in helping her. Soul found that he could not make himself look her directly in the eye, but never allowed his feelings to be shown in front of her. Because why would any meister want to know that their weapon thought himself to be weak and useless?

But from knowing all that had happened to them, it made him question what really went on.

Had all of it really been just a hallucination?

"It's okay..." she repeated everytime he asked if she was okay. "It's okay..." she'd say everytime she accidentally dropped a plate while doing the dishes, something that Maka almost never would do. "It's okay," she'd repeat like a broken record until the words became etched permanently in his mind.

* * *

A muscular hand shook his shoulder and shook him awake. "Wake up, Soul. You dozed off," the spiky blue-haired ninja boy says. Soul grasps his wrist, telling him to stop shaking him.

"Sorry to call you in so early in the morning," Stein addresses the group of Kid,Liz, Patty, BlackStar, Tsubaki, and Soul. "But this is urgent. As I've said, there is a way to save Maka from her endless nightmares. And it's extremely dangerous." Soul leans closer to him in his chair sleepily. "It can only be done by one person. Obviously, the one to save Maka is gonna be Soul, since he is the most capable one of getting closer to her."

"What are we planning on doing that requires all of us?" asks Kid.

"I'm glad you asked. This mission requires a lot of energy and a lot of Soul Resonance."

"Hey doc, would ya tell us what happened to Maka first?" BlackStar brazenly asks, yawning afterwards.

"Ah, yes. The type of madness that Soul and Maka had encountered is a special type that invades the body of its host, then controls their mind. This usually causes sudden changes in personality. Eventually, the madness will begin draining the energy of its victim through nightmares and dreams, until the person goes into a coma of never-ending nightmares from which they can't wake up from." The group gives him a horrified look, then turns their attention to Maka, who was still clutching her bedsheets tensely and whimpering. "This is why time is precious," he says, his expression darkening through his glassses.

The room fills with sullen silence as they realize the fate of their friend if they were to fail. Soul reaches up and squeezes the stitches of his scar, remembering that he had sworn to protect his meister at all cost. "Maka..." he murmurs softly, constraint filling his tone. "I understand the mission, Professor Stein. I will bring Maka back, even if it means that I won't come back." He stood up suddenly, shocking his friends. "I _will_ save you," he says to Maka. She relaxes her tensed up body and her grip on his hand loosens, as if actually hearing his comforting words. "I promise."

"Good," Stein interrupts. "Is everyone ready then?" They all respond with a determined nod. "The only way to save her is if Soul goes into her mind and into her dreams. There, he must locate her and bring her out of the madness, wherever she is trapped. But be warned; the madness will be there at every turn, trying to tempt you to fall in it too. If that happens and if you do fall, then you will not able to save her, and you will end up just like her. Understand?" Soul nods grimly.

"Please be careful..." Tsubaki urges sadly.

"Yeah, Soul! You better bring her back!" BlackStar beams at him.

"Good luck," Kid encourages.

"We'll try our hardest, too," Liz and Patty offer their support. Soul smirks at them approvingly.

"Is everyone ready?" Stein asks, standing up from his chair. "Soul, have a seat and relax in that chair."

The weapons turned into their forms and landed in their meisters' hands with a magnificent light. Soul sits down in the chair and unwinds his body, leaning back all the way and dropping his shoulders and taking a deep breath. "Ready," he murmurs.

"Concentrate..." Stein's body, as well as everyone else's begin to emanate a soft glow. "Listen to the steady beat of our Chain Resonance. Use it like a metronome. When you find your soul fully relaxing, imagine youself leaving your body and enter into Maka's," the professor instructs. Soul listened ever so closely.

Then he found it. _'Can you hear it, Soul?' _A little demon inside of his head had once told him. '_Their souls resonating in perfect harmony; it almost sounds like a song,' _it would taunt. "It's up to you to find her, Soul." He hears Stein's voice one last time before he could feel himself being lifted up off the ground. Soul looks down in shock, and finds that he was ten feet off the floor, looking down on everybody resonating together. He looked directly below and saw his own body still sitting there in his chair, eyes squeezed shut. Peering at the rest of his body, he sees that it was translucent.

_Enter Maka's body_, he recalled Stein telling him. Soul looks down at the bed where she lay, and swooped down right above head. Reaching over to touch her hair, his hands get sucked into her body, and the world around him spins into darkness. "Good job, Soul," Stein's voice says, but it is very distant and unclear. "You've entered a realm of madness where reality meets dreams, where madness and sanity collide. Welcome to the Dreamscape."

* * *

**A/N: I probably used a misquote from that little demon dude from episode 37, when they were doing the resonance chain link thingy. I was watching it the other day and found it quite fitting in this story :)**

**Please leave a review!**

**~Silverbunni712**


	3. Chapter 3

He wandered around in the darkness for what felt like hours, drifting around pointlessly and not knowing where he should go. He had tried to call out to her, but his voice never got far; even though the plane looked endless, it felt as if he was trapped in a small space. He even tried to ask Stein where he should go next, but there was too much static from their resonance for him to be heard clearly. So he just floated around in her Dreamscape aimlessly. His body was weightless - almost felt as light as a feather - as he tried to hover around. But there was not even a floor to land on.

"Where the hell are you, Maka?" He murmurs to himself as he flies around her Dreamscape slowly in the endless black. It was not even a few minutes after he had said that when he heard the faintest noise - a small whisper calling out for his name and echoed all around him, seemingly bouncing off the invisible walls. He heart nearly leaped into his throat at the sudden sound of his name. "M-Maka?!" He shouted louder. Suddenly, a small orb of light appeared all the way at the end of the darkness, the same orb that had shown itself to them in the building. He gazed at it cautiously as his body approached and stopped before it could get to close.

But it seemed to be the source of the voice. Its whispers became louder as he got nearer; he recognized the tormented voice as Maka's, calling out to him. Soul feared that it was one of the tricks of the madness which was trying to trap him as well, but he knew he could not ignore the pained cry of his meister, already trapped in her own conscious. He had to save her; he promised that he would not rest until he did. Not that Soul was able to get rest anyways while knowing that she was being eaten alive inside of her own brain by the nightmares.

Swallowing his heart back into his chest, Soul reached out his hand to the glowing orb and grabbed it. A shock ran through his whole body as he felt himself being sucked into the little thing - the same feeling that he had when he got absorbed into Maka's Dreamscape. Everything around him became a blast of white, and he disappeared into the orb with a single sweep, not knowing if he'd ever come back out from it.

* * *

They made their way up the stairs of Shibusen early in the morning, as they did every day, with Soul trudging a step behind her nonchalantly, hands stuffed in his pockets. It had been a few days after the mission and after she had been acting strange, but he didn't count this day as different than any other. He let his eyes close calmly while he walked and listened to her their footsteps as they went, until suddenly hers stopped. His opened and he found that she had stopped completely on the step in front of her, frozen. "Hey, what's wrong?" He asked and touched her shoulder gingerly.

"I...I...don't feel very good..." she stammered out weakly, then collapsed to her knees. Soul caught her in a panic, resting her back on his chest, and almost falling one hell of a fall down those stairs. "Soul...can we go home now...?" Maka asked weakly.

He bit his lower lip, seeing that they were almost there to the top. Gently brushing her bangs off her forehead, Soul saw that her face a flushed a deep red and she probably had a fever. "I think we should check up at the doctor's first." With one motion, he swept her off her feet and trudged up the stairs again, this time with Maka curled up in his chest. Usually, she'd make an arguement that she was fine, and that she could walk on her own back. This time she didn't fight his grasp, but accepted it.

"Soul...It's fine. Just go home. I can rest, I promise," she pleaded quietly. But he knew better than to listen to her stubbornness, and continued to carry her to the top and into the school. "It's fine."

"I think I'd feel better if you got checked by Nygus first, just in case, okay?" He told her.

"Really. We should just go home. I can rest there. There is no need to see any doctor," her tone changed suddenly from regular old Maka to a robotic one. "Let's go home now."

"No way. You look too sick to just rest. We gotta see the doctor, and I'm not going home until we do," he insisted.

Concerned looks were shot at the them as the other students watched the weapon carry his sick-looking meister to the DWMA's infirmary. Nygus looked up at them from her desk and asked, "What happened to Maka?"

Maka's face had reddened even more, and she muttered to herself in the state of hers. The nurse took Maka's temperature as soon as Soul set her down on one of the beds, reading the meter with worry, glancing up from it and back down at the gauge. "Is there anything wrong, Nygus?" Soul asked.

"This is strange...usually when someone is sick, their temperature rises as their body fights off the germs inside. But in the case of Maka, she may look sick on the ouside but her inner body temperature has lowered to 96.8 degrees, with could be considered dangerous for a human. This is certainly strange...I might have to notify Stein about this..." She rushed outside the office with her clipboard and left Soul alone with Maka. He leaned down to gently rest his hand against her forehead, and found that she was cold to the touch as well as the rest of her body.

"Maka? How are you feeling?" He murmured.

"Soul...take me home..." she whimpered out her response. "Please, just...take me home..." she reached up to grasp his arm, her freezing fingers sending a chill up his spine.

"I can't! They have to find out what's wrong with you first," he replied. Stein, followed by Nygus, barged in and immediately went over to Maka. Stein read the temperature guage that she had taken from Maka. Soul tried to read his emotion but the glare of his glasses blocked his eyes.

"This is not good," Stein said seriously. "This is not good at all."

* * *

He awoke with the sun shining bright in his eyes. Shielding the blinding light from his eyes using the back of his hand, Soul rose up from the ground and looked around. All around him was an endless bank of sand followed by more sand. Ruffling the dust out of his clothes, he looked around for anything under the beating rays of the sun. "Maka!" He shouts into the distance. "Maka!"

There was no sign of her, or anything except the vast desert hills made of sand. Soul took off his jacket and threw it on the ground to cool himself down from the searing heat, and started to wander around some more to look for her, calling her name repeatedly. He had managed to make his way up one of those hills to look around. And then he saw her, like a small dot in the middle of a blank page, sitting on the ground playing with the sand around her. "Maka!" He ran to her, letting out a sigh of relief. But his footprints halted after he saw that Maka was not exactly Maka.

The girl on the ground looked up at him curiously with her large, shinning emerald eyes. She cocked her head with wonder of the boy who stood over her and got up from the sand to look him in the eye. Except she was only as tall as his waist. "Hiya, mister!" Little Maka said with excitement in her tone. "What are you doing here?"

He wanted to ask her the same thing.


	4. Chapter 4

He wanted to leap for joy, yet break down in tears at the same time. Soul peered down at his meister who, at the same time, was not his meister but was still certainly Maka, and asks cautiously, "Are you...Maka?"

She puffs out her chest proudly. "Yup! My name is Maka Albarn, and I'm gonna be the best meister in Shibusen! Just like my Mama!" Soul offers a sad smile in return for her bravery.

"Do you know where you are right now or how you got here?" He squatted down in the sand to match her eye-level.

Maka peers up in thought for a moment, seemingly stumped on his question. "I dunno. I just...I just woke up here. I don't know anything else, though." Her face lights up with another thought. "What's your name, mister?"

Staring at her perplexed expression, he answers, "My name is Soul Eater. I think we've met before."

"I don't think I've even seen you before; how do you even know my name?"

"I'm pretty sure we've met somewhere," he says softly. "Somewhere in a dream, where we are right now."

Maka looks up at him with mystified eyes. "In a dream right now? But... it doesn't really feel like a dream!"

"That's because you don't know that you're sleeping," Soul answers patiently. "The only problem is that we have to figure out a way to get outta here. Is there any way you'd know a way out of this place?"

She shook her head sadly, turning her gaze down towards the ground and kicking the sand absently with her foot. "No...I'm sorry. But if this is a dream, I can wake myself up from it, right?" Maka yelps as she pinches her side in an attempt to awaken herself, and Soul waits for something to happen. But nothing did.

"I guess that it's not how it works. I have an idea; why don't we look for an exit together?"

"How? There's no where else to go..."

"We can just keep on walking until we find something, I guess." Soul glanced all around him, observing the empty sea of desert bathed in the harsh light of the blazing sun and nothing else. Feeling another hand slip into his, he looks down and finds Maka gazing at him with uncertainty. "It's okay," he reassures her gently, squeezing her hand. "We'll find a way out sooner or later."

* * *

"_This way -"_

_"The boy approaches -"_

_"Farther he gets into the Dreamscape -"_

_"We fear that he may come to close -"_

_"_SILENCE!" A booming voice roars over the whispering low growls of the other voices, and they all quiet down in an instant, shriveling with fear in their corner of darkness.

"_He is almost upon her now," _one hisses through the darkness, its words echoing across the cavernous pit in which they dwelled in. "_The boy will find a way to free her. We must act."_

"_We must get rid of this nuisance at once."_

_"Before he finds her."_

_"And she slips from our grip."_

"Do not worry," the booming voice, now lowered, says calmly. "I will destroy him. The madness shall consume his soul, along with the girl." A deep rumble came from within the hole. "_I am the source of this insanity..._" The pit gurgled and bubbled furiously, something evil and dark stirring up in the very middle and rising up from its thick puddle of madness. The form began to take shape - a droopy head, long dripping arms solidifying, and legs still ankle-deep below the surface. The other demons followed the behind it as its full blackened form took shape and made the first step out of the pit, letting out a horrifying screech. It sulked over to a rift in the middle of the wall and shrunk back down into a tiny puddle, flowing through the portal swiftly towards its destination - the desert Dreamscape.

* * *

They had been walking for a long time now, he thought to himself. Maka's little footsteps had begun to slow their pace, and now she was dragging them along in the sand and hanging onto his limp hand. The dry breeze whipped around blistering sand that hit their skin like shards of ice. He shielded his eyes from the lash of the winds, coughing out the desert dust from his mouth. Though the harsh conditions didn't seem to be affecting Maka, his eyes kept a steady watch while they walked, occasionally glancing from the corner of his eye to see her. "Something...something is wrong, Soul," she says suddenly, stopping her walking completely.

"What's wrong?" He asks.

"There's something happening, I can feel it!" Her gaze shoots up to the clear-blue sky, and the breeze ceases blowing. She could feel his hand tighten its grip as the ground begins to shift and shake from under them, and he pulls her protectively closer to his body.

"What the hell is happening?!" Soul shouts over the rumble. Then, just as it started, there was nothing. Just eerie silence that had replaced it.

Maka's eyes were still planted on the sky above them. "I can feel it; it's coming!" Her words filled him with fear, and he also turned his attention upwards at the empty sky. But nothing was there, as far as he could see. They waited a while.

"Maka, we should keep moving now. I guess your Dreamscape is becoming more and more unstable with all of that madness in it -" A thunderous roar jolts them both. He looked up once more and saw a rip in the middle of the sky with black clouds pouring out, covering up the light and turning the yellow-white desert into a sullen grey. Drops of rain fell from the sky, but it wasn't rain. A drop splashed down on the back of Soul's hand, and he stared at it, gaping. It had fallen from the sky, but it was not rain; the thick little droplets streaked down his hand, leaving a trail of black. They were showered in a blanket of black blood. It fell down on them and on the ground around them, bubbling at their feets.

Maka whimpers and anchors herself around Soul's waist, hugging it tightly. "Soul! What's happening?"

He response be clutching her tighter and shielding her from the raining madness. The gurgling intensifies below their feet, and Soul drags Maka away from the puddle and into safety just in time before the demon reforms from it. It's drooping form loomed over them, and a pair of red glowing eyes appear on its oval face and glowered at them. "What the hell...is that?!" He yells at it.

The glob leans forward, its appendages reforming again and laughed maliciously. Its voice was distorted and clouded by other voices; as if more than one person was talking along with it at once. "_Foolish boy...I am the insanity that you seek to destroy in this body. I am the madness that will consume you."_

_"Give the girl to us."_

_"Your efforts are useless."_

The other voices chimed in separately. The demon outstretches its arm and snatches little Maka away from Soul. She cries out and reaches for him, but barely misses his hand. "Maka!" He shouts as she is sucked into the demon's body. "What the hell are you?!"

"_Do not be alarmed; the girl is not dead yet," _it growls with grotesque delight in its tone. _"My madness cannot devour her in this level of Dreamscape. She was sent deeper into her mind."_

"What are you talking about?! There are other levels to a Dreamscape?!" Soul snarls at it.

_"Yes, indeed. If you seek to save her -"_

_"Then you must go deeper -"_

_"Where the madness is stronger -"_

_"Where it will tempt you relentlessly -"_

_"You may only save her when you have reached the deepest part of her mind -"_

_"The subconscious,"_ the voices finish whispering.

"Why are you telling me this? You do realize that you're helping me, right?" He asks with suspicion.

The demon laughs mockingly at him. _"In order for us to eat anything, their souls must also be in the root of any Dreamscape - the subconscious mind. Once there, the insanity will finally be at its peak, swallowing up anything there. You would surely make a good meal for us..." _

"As if I'd ever let you hurt my meister!" He scoffs. "I made a promise that I'd come back, and I'd bring Maka back with me...there's no way I'll fall for you stupid little tricks."

_"Amusing little fragment...if you think you can beat the madness, then move on ahead. But be weary; there will always be something that will try to drag you in with her. Move on ahead, little one. You will make a wonderful meal for us."_

Out of the puddle, a black door rises, and the madness sinks back into the pit. Soul walks up to it cautiously, feeling the cold and hard knob in the palm of his hand. He turns the knob slowly, and the door creeks open to a long black hallway.

Sucking in his breath, he took a step into the darkness, with the door slamming shut behind him. There was nowhere to go but forward, and no way of turning back and waking up.


	5. Chapter 5

"M-Maka?!"

He had been wandering around, stumbling through the darkness of the hallway. Panic filled his voice as he called out to her and she didn't answer. With the hallway seemingly going on forever and the door behind him now a speck in the distance, he felt he could no longer go on. Soul continued to trudge along the mysterious pass, wondering if it would end or if he would have to keep on like this until his mind finally slipped and he became another victim of the madness. "Maka!"

His legs were growing tired, and so were his arms. How long did he have to wait? "Dammit!" He curses at the darkness, beginning to run. "I don't have time for this..."

_Yummy little fragment..._ a deep and demonic voice echoed through the hallway, and the ground began to rumble. Startled, he stopped and looked around frantically.

"What the hell is going on?!" Suddenly, a red door began to rise out of the ground slowly. He stares at the bright maroon door unsteadily as it emerges from the black ground out of nowhere, and puts his hand on the doorknob cautiously. He remembered the vague feeling of seeing this door for the first time, in his own mind, and how frozen the knob felt in the palm of his hand as he twisted it. Slowly, it creaked open and he saw the black and white checkered floor behind it.

His footsteps reverberated around the candlelit room, and the blood-red curtains hanging from the black ceiling seemed to stiffen up at his appearance. "Maka!? Are you here? Please answer me!" He was almost desperate now, running around the room and pulling back the curtains and pushing against the brick walls behind them, searching for even a hint of her. "C'mon, you stupid monsters! Where the hell is she?!" He slammed his fists against a solid wall. Soul let out a frustrated sigh. He'd have to go deeper. But how? Was this merely a dead end?

"Soul, is that you?" A faint, feminine voice that he recognized as his meister's called out from behind a curtain, and his head perked up at the sound of it. Like a dog who hears the tone of his master's voice. A curtain finally rustled and Maka peeked her head through, her curious emerald eyes gazing at him.

"Maka!" He ran to her and nearly ripped the cloth apart. "I've been freakin' looking for your for forever! Let's get the hell out of here already!" He took her hand and led her to the door, which strangely had disappeared.

He paused to survey the room fully. Suddenly, Maka grabbed him into a hug, to his surprise, and held him tightly. "Soul, I'm so glad you came. I thought I'd be stuck here..." He was relieved to finally hear her true voice, not one that was robotic and stiff. He hugged her back and squeezed her.

"I'm glad too. Now all we have to do is get the hell outta here, but I can't seem to find the door."

"I've been here for quite a while too, and I don't think there's a way out..." she said sadly.

"Let's look around, behind these curtains." They both split and began to tear down the curtains, searching for some way out. Soul clawed at the bricks, hoping that something would give way to some secret passage or something, but there was nothing. They were simply trapped. They searched in silence for a moment, until Soul finally asks, "What were you doing while you were in here? Did the madness...do anything?"

Maka paused. "I don't know anymore. I just woke up in this room and didn't know where I came from. There's was no door, so I just sat here and waited for someone to come. But I knew you'd come, Soul."

"Hm..." He buried himself in his thoughts while he absent-mindedly shuffled around.

"What were you doing?"

"I was risking my ass to save you," he snorted with secret relief. "Stein said that if I don't get you outta here in time, then the madness will consume us both. That's why we need to find a way to escape."

"Oh," her answer seemed to be sad.

"What's wrong?" He asked.

"It's just that...while I was in here, the madness talked to me."

"What do you mean?"

Maka gazed downward. "It was speaking to me, that's all. It said that madness isn't bad and it told me all about the Dreamscape, and how it reveals your innermost feelings..."

He perked his eyebrow at her with suspicion. "Don't tell me you actually listened to their crap. You're better than that, Maka."

"I know, but their voices...they told me not to worry. They helped me finally realized my true feelings for everybody. For everyone I care about..." she trailed off.

"Forget about them," he said. "They're just trying to trick you so they can devour your soul. You know that, Maka."

"I mean, they helped me...they helped me realize...that I have more deep feelings that I knew I had! They helped me realize that I...I really like you, Soul." He could hear her footsteps slowly approaching her until he could sense her standing right behind him.

"M-Maka! What the hell?!" A startled Soul drew back as his meister grabbed his hand and pulled him against her tightly, her face buried in the crook of his neck. "You're friggin' crazy! We need to be concentrating on getting outta here!"

"No! The madness said it'll be alright...if we stay here, then it'll be safe. We could live here forever! I mean, think about it. If we wake up we'd have to face reality all over again," she pleaded gently into his ear. "Don't you like me, too?"

"No..we can't stay here," he pushed her away slowly. "It's the monsters and demons that are getting to you! Listen to yourself! The normal Maka would never say these things!"

"I _am_ the normal Maka!" She pushed against him harder, his back against the wall. "Why won't you listen to me? I am your meister!"

Her hands reached up to caress his cheeks and bring his face closer. "Let go, Maka! You're under the influence of the black blood!" When she finally looked up and into his eyes, he could see the passion burning within her, the deep urge that surged through her soul and escaped into his. His mind started slipping. And he was enjoying it.

"Stay here, _please_..." she crooned and a shiver ran down his spine, and she brought him even closer, her body pushing against his. "You'll be safe."

He was slipping, falling into temptation. Soul was so close now, his lips barely hovering over hers, touching, yet distant enough to keep him away. She was waiting for him to kiss her. "Maka..." he whispered.

"Please stay..."

He was slipping, deeper and deeper. Finally finding the strength to open his eyes, he saw her form starting to shimmer. Shimmer? "You...you aren't..."

"Soul!" He watched as her eyes shot open, registering the sharp pain and the scythe on his arm that had pierced through her lower abdomen. "Why...why did you stab me? Aren't I...aren't I your meister?" She tilted her head innocently, and he drove the point of his scythe deeper into her stomach until he could see it jutting out from her back, dripping with black blood. She grunt with pain, and so did he.

"You aren't Maka," he said firmly and shoved her limp body away.

She fell to the ground, black blood trickling from her wound and all over the floor. She laughed. Her voice, pure and sweet, became dark and distorted as her smile widened. "I see now," she said softly. "Even I could not fool you, boy."

"I knew you weren't her from the start. I know my meister, you stupid blob," he retorted and watched as the black liquid bubbled and melted the floor.

The fake Maka smiled once more as Soul peered down at her with disgust. "Heheh...you're such a clever boy...no wonder the girl likes you so much...heheh..."

"Tell me," he drew out his scythe again and pointed it at her face. "Where is she?"

She gaze up at the empty ceiling. "She is deeper in the Dreamscape. But be warned, boy. She will not be given up easily."

* * *

**A/N: Yay! I'm finally back with this story after holding it off for 2 months now. I thought I'd continue it now before I forget about it completely. **

**Anyway, I'm sure you've heard that I'm holding a poll on my profile to vote which story I should release next right? Have you voted yet? It'll be released at the end of this month, so hurry up and vote!**

**~Amber**


	6. Chapter 6

Soul ran through the dark this time, a long tunnel with the same desperation as last time. His patience as well as his sanity was wearing thin. He didn't think he'd be able to keep on like this, running around in Maka's mind without knowing where he'd end up next or where the madness blob wold pop up and try to swallow him whole. His breaths became shallow as he slowed to a stop in the middle of nowhere in the blackness, searching around for another light. For some reason, the vibe he was getting in the past darkness was different. As if the air was vibrating with electricity and a monster was lying in wait for him to pass by. The scenery hadn't changed, though. This worried him. Would he find another fake Maka trying to drown him in a pool of insanity? Would he be too late, only to have his meister's mind fully consumed by the blob? Would he fall prey to it as well?

He continued through, letting his legs carry him onward without thought. He was almost there. He could feel it. There was a slight tingling sensation in the back of his head, and it dawned on him that there was a door nearby. Where? He started to feel out into what seemed like empty space. Then, he felt a cold shiver that ran up his spine as soon as his finger tips brushed up against a wooden frame. Soul blindly reached for the door and felt around for a doorknob, finding that was ice cold. The knob melted, leaking through the gaps of his fingers and to the ground as the door opened wide, pouring a white light into the blackness. All he had to do was step in.

* * *

He was floating in a surreal world. His body was suspended over the ground by an invisible force that carried him past a seemingly peaceful pasture of flowing green grass and exotically bright flowers. In the surrounding air were items that randomly floating along with him. He reached out for a book that came towards him. Dark Side of the Moon, its title read. Maka's favorite book.

He let the book wander away from him as the air took him downwards, and his feet landed gently a patch of grass. It seemed like a harmless place. This must be the deepest part of her Dreamscape, he thought. Only a matter of time before the madness would reach even here. Panicked by the thought, he swiftly jerked his head around and searched.

Where could she be?

Soul swatted the towering grass out of his way as he walked around, calling her name. No answer. He called again, but there is no response. He fought his way through the foliage until there was none, and the pasture ended and became a sea of clouds. Dreamscape was a strange place. He carefully trod across their fragile surface, praying that the clouds would not give way like regular clouds would. His steps were light at first, but then turned into leaps as he figured that they were obviously not normal, and soon was jumping through the vast plain.

The sun seemed to be following him from above, basking him in its warm light. Even though his way was illuminated and clear, he was still unsure of her whereabouts. He had to find her, and soon. He could already hear the insanity from beneath the cover of white, bubbling and oozing through the ground of clouds. Soul lunged for the sky and forced his way upwards.

The white fluffy bed below became a hard, solid formation of concrete. He was now in an unfamiliar place filled with dilapidated buildings and broken down street signs, abandoned highway roads with cracking pavement and shattered windows whose fragments littered the floor. He began to recognized the post-apocalyptic scenery - Death City, Nevada. Maka was dreaming of her own home town. But why was is destroyed?

Soul's head sprang a sudden idea and he started sprinting down the road to his house. She must be there. He ran past broken pieces of glass and fallen buildings and barely recognizable structures. But when he got there, their apartment was untouched by the disaster. Soul forced his way through the locked door and kicked it down, yelling her name with high hopes. "Maka! Where are - " The living room was empty. His bedroom was empty. Her bedroom was empty. The kitchen showed no signs of her. "Where are you..." his voice trailed off hopelessly. There was no Maka.

He'd have to search around the whole damn city now, and he was running out of time. Soul strides down the stairs and out into the desolate streets.

Where? Where else could she be?

_Soul... _

The slightest sigh of a voice, carried by the wind, so faint he could barely make out what it said. Just a whisper. Maka's voice. He ran towards it. He wasn't sure where exactly his legs were leading him, but he was so sure this time would lead him to the right place. He was so close now. Rounding a corner, Soul halted to a stop when he realized that the voice had also ceased. The rest would have to be up to him. He inhaled sharply, staring down a fork in the road of two identical paths, listening carefully for the sweet murmur of his meister's tone.

Soul took the left path, still unsure about where he'd end up. Maka had never felt father away from him. He found that his long stretch of concrete ended in a dead end, nowhere else to go except through a door whose rusty hinges were barely dangling from its frame. A dilapidated building stood in front of him, faded bricks jutting out from the sides, only two stories high. Soul entered the building cautiously, wary of the oncoming madness that could get him from any darkened corner. Only the small filter of light from a boarded up window illuminated the barren floors. "Maka?" His lonely voice bounced across the grey walls.

_Soul..._

He heard it again, this time louder and clearer. Soul tripped his way up a flight of stair with his meager amount of light and stumbled upon the second floor. His head shot up as he heard a startled gasp coming from nearby. His crimson eyes scanned the room, more lit up from the numerous windows positioned along the walls. Then he spotted her. Huddled up in the corner of the room, clothes ripped and tattered, grasping her legs against her chest, face streaked with dirt and dust was Maka, gaping at him with a wide-eyed emerald stare.

"Who...who are you?!"


End file.
